The payload team promoted the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering with our successful launch at the 2025 NASA Student Launch Competition. This yearly event challenges colleges nationwide to design, build and launch a rocket with a payload. NASA changes requirements annually. This year, the payload needed to collect flight data (rocket speed, air temperature and height), transmit data via radio, and keep model astronauts safe. We developed over 100 ideas and used specific strategies to narrow them to a final design.

Our sponsor, Ghost Controls, produces gate automation products for customers’ pre-existing swing gates. This project aimed to increase customer satisfaction with Ghost Control’s ZombieLock. The lock uses an electronic switch to close over a solid receiver pin for property security. Customers reported latching problems due to misalignments between latch and receiver, often caused by soft soil from harsh weather and gate sag.

We aimed to design, build and fly a high-powered rocket for NASA’s annual Student Launch Challenge. Our goals were creating a new design emphasizing recovery reliability that could be disarmed for inspection, and developing better methods to evaluate subsystems on the ground.

Southeast Con is a student conference hosted yearly by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) that includes a hardware competition where college teams design, build and program an autonomous robot. For the 2025 competition, the game field measured 4' x 8' with an asteroid theme. Scattered around were magnetic and non-magnetic materials. The field had an outdoor section and an indoor cave area with a camera emitting infrared waves that interfered with sensors.

The National Fluid Power Association holds a yearly competition for college students, challenging us to rethink how bikes work by using fluid power. Imagine pedaling a bike where your energy powers a hydraulic pump, which moves fluid through a motor to turn the wheels. It’s like water flowing through a mill, but the energy flows through tubes to make the bike move.

Danfoss Turbocor designs high-efficiency compressors that help heat or cool large buildings. They tasked us with improving their testing procedure for an important stepper motor in their compressors. This stepper motor controls air entering the compressor by opening and closing small fins, similar to an air conditioning vent. Danfoss Turbocor evaluates the motor’s lifecycle to assess quality, reliability and overall compressor performance. They lacked an official testing device, so our project focused on building one.

Corning aims to improve its diesel exhaust filter production line by creating an automated pallet topper machine that can stack filters without human help. Currently, employees place and remove the final pallet on a stack of filters. By adding an automated pallet topper, workers can focus on other parts of the production line, making the workflow more efficient. Corning seeks a project that can complete the placement of the final pallet topper in a suitable amount of time.

Florida has the third highest rate of human trafficking in the country. We aimed to design a tool to help authorities track and prosecute potential offenders and disrupt human trafficking in the state. Our device features an array of sensors, GPS and cameras hidden inside a rear-view mirror. The mirror allows police to gather images and locations from inside the vehicle. Collecting these data points allows authorities to create a map of trafficking hotspots while providing irrefutable evidence of crimes.

We aimed to create a vehicle capable of gliding underwater and collecting data. Inspired by other underwater vehicles, we wanted to simulate an underwater glider. We built a physical model to check the accuracy of the simulations. The glider collects data similar to those collected by gliders in other industries, such as water pressure and temperature. The defense industry makes use of underwater gliders for intelligence collection. They often use long-endurance vehicles to collect vital information to aid national defense.

The NASA Psyche Capstone Project program is a partnership between NASA and Arizona State University. Students participating in the program work on projects related to the ongoing NASA Psyche mission. Students create projects that would be used in future missions to the asteroid Psyche. We developed a method of using Psyche’s surface materials in additive manufacturing. We focused our project on adapting metal 3D printing technology for use in low-gravity environments.